


Participation Medals of the Heart

by magikfanfic



Category: Runaways (TV 2017)
Genre: Pining, mentions of other members but these three have speaking roles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-13
Updated: 2017-12-13
Packaged: 2019-02-14 03:32:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,015
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12998934
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/magikfanfic/pseuds/magikfanfic
Summary: 08. Ah, unrequited love.  When your best isn’t enough. (Participation medals of the heart.)Molly is currently staring at her like she has caught herself on fire and leapt screaming over a cliff for a cause. To be honest, Gert thinks that might be better than what she is actually doing, which is standing in the middle of a room watching Chase watching Karo watching Nico watching Alex. Being on fire and leaping over a cliff for a cause would at least be doing something for a cause, political revolution, the end to isms, equality, something. She wonders what movement would allow that sort of action. She wonders whether she can find one on short notice and join it when she is not yet eighteen and has a younger sister and a pet dinosaur to look after. A whole host of evil parents to try and take down. And a crush that has slowly been consuming her from the inside out.





	Participation Medals of the Heart

**Author's Note:**

> I knew it was only a matter of time before the show resulted in new fanfic so take this hastily written drabble that is based on an A Softer World prompt.

08\. Ah, unrequited love. When your best isn’t enough. (Participation medals of the heart.)

Molly is currently staring at her like she has caught herself on fire and leapt screaming over a cliff for a cause. To be honest, Gert thinks that might be better than what she is actually doing, which is standing in the middle of a room watching Chase watching Karo watching Nico watching Alex. Being on fire and leaping over a cliff for a cause would at least be doing something for a cause, political revolution, the end to isms, equality, something. She wonders what movement would allow that sort of action. She wonders whether she can find one on short notice and join it when she is not yet eighteen and has a younger sister and a pet dinosaur to look after. A whole host of evil parents to try and take down. And a crush that has slowly been consuming her from the inside out.

There is a lot happening in the life of Gert Yorkes, but the only thing she can currently focus on is Chase watching Karo.

It’s dumb. It’s dumb. This is dumb. The worst thing is that she knows it is dumb, is fully aware of the facts and the circumstances and the knowledge that unrequited love is messy and problematic. That the fairy tales where the ugly duckling becomes a beautiful swan and gets the guy are just that, fairy tales, which are, intrinsically, lies or, depending on the story, warnings. Do not go into the forest because something bad is there and it might eat you. Do not trust the man with bushy eyebrows because he might be a wolf in disguise who only wants to use you for his own means. Do not eat people’s houses because it’s rude as shit, and they will inevitably try to make you pay for it.

So, yeah, she knows, but it doesn’t mean that she heeds the lessons. Not completely. For all that Gert is this person who knows herself and tries to control herself and every facet of her life, her heart, dumb heart, doesn’t pay attention, doesn’t let her control it.

It just keeps going. Pining. 

Gert Yorkes has never felt dumb in her entire life, but she does when it comes to all of this wishing and wanting and yearning and thinking. With every small word said to her, with every little look, that hey, you know, maybe. Maybe he’s paying attention. Maybe there’s something in her that he can see. Maybe they’ve shared a moment. And then it blinks out. She wakes up. She realizes that, no, none of that is actually a thing that is happening anywhere except inside her head.

There is an entire world inside of her head and, unfortunately, not all of it is schemes to demolish the corrupt government and establish something new. No, at least 65% of it, which is too much when there is so much else to do, is devoted to whether or not Chase’s eyes soften a little when they look at her. They do not. She is sure that they do not. Except, perhaps, maybe that one time. Or that other time.

Or maybe no time at all.

“What are you doing?” Molly asks, though the look on her face has slid from annoyance into knowing, and Gert is equal parts pained and glad to have her sister who is so smart and so chipper and so kind. Even if she is sometimes a pain in the way that all siblings are pains. 

I don’t know what I would have done without you, she thinks about saying to Molly sometimes but never does because she doesn’t know how those kinds of words work. So instead she tells Molly that dance team is patriarchal and terrible and reinforces gender stereotypes when what she means to say is good luck, I love you. And Molly, who has been with her forever, will already know what she means behind the words. Like Molly knows when she is nervous. Like Molly knows when she is sad. 

Molly knows Gert’s emotions before she knows them herself most of the time. Because Molly is better with people. Always has been.

“Nothing,” Gert says, slides her glasses up her nose, fists her hands into the pockets of the jeans jacket Stacey bought her, laughing and pointing out how she would have worn something similar when she was young in a way that made Gert die a little inside because how embarrassing rather than how terrible, which is the way her parents make her die a little inside now. 

She says nothing, but Molly knows better. Gert can tell by the way she looks across the room and sighs and shakes her head before linking their arms together. Molly is taller than her. Everyone is taller than she is, but this is okay because it just means she has to make her voice and her opinions louder, stronger, taller so that no one can step on them. Like her heart. Dumb heart.

“Come on,” Molly says, tugs her away from the middle of the room. “Let’s find coffee. Or chocolate. Or something for me to bench press.”

Gert rolls her eyes and laughs in the way that only her sister can make her laugh. “No bench pressing. You’re not passing out on me here.” Don’t leave me alone is what she means to say, and Molly leans against her, a solid weight that is as calming as any of the mantras they taught her to help her through her anxiety attacks long ago. 

“Fine,” the girl says with a huff but with no irritation in her voice because she already knows the heart of the comment. 

Gert wonders if any of the rest of them will ever fully figure out all the things she says behind sharp words, if they were will ever pause to consider the other meanings, the way her tongue cannot form soft words except in song. No. Probably not. She couldn’t even teach Chase Spanish, after all, why would she be able to teach him something infinitely more complicated, something that even she herself cannot always make sense of? Besides. He wouldn’t have any interest in it anyway. “So, Mols, where to?”

And Molly leads the way through twisted, curving hallways, and Gert follows with her mind and her eyes, though she thinks a part of her heart remains in that room watching Chase watching Karo watching Nico watching Alex.

No one watches me, part of her whispers, and she hates it. Hates the thought. Hates the feeling. 

Molly laughs and teases her into walking along an edge she normally wouldn’t go near because Molly is brave and has never been anxious the way that Gert can be as her mind spins up a hundred thousand worst case scenarios. “Stop thinking about it,” Molly says, voice high, clear, young. Hopeful even when things around them are bad because that is. That is Molly. That is her sister.

“I’m trying,” Gert says, and she means it, understand it in all the ways that Molly is trying to convey. Even though she can’t. She knows she can’t.

It just doesn’t work that way. This stupid unrequited love. This stupid attempt that she makes where her best, which is normally so much more than needed, just isn’t enough. It means as little as those medals she got in kindergarten for participating. The ones her parents thought were super because everyone came away with something, though Gert always saw how hollow they were, how flawed. And they lost their shine so quickly, the sheen flaking away under her fingers. Thanks for trying. Glad you made it. Here you go. Your participation medal for your heart. Nevermind that it’s cracked across the face. At least you tried.

“I’m trying,” she repeats again to no one in particular, and Molly looks over her shoulder at her, older than her years, and smiles the way she smiles when Gert is sad and tugs her hand forward, onward. 

“It’s okay,” Molly says. “It’s okay. Trying is enough sometimes.”

Gert tries to smile back, but her dumb heart just winces and it falters on her lips. “I don’t like losing.”

“Believe me, I know.” 

The tone is fake annoyance, and Gert almost shoves her playfully off the ledge but doesn’t because sisters. Because when everything else washes away, what will she have, really? Molly. Just Molly. And this stuttering, breathless, uncontrollable gasp of her dumb heart, which does not listen to logic or sense, just continues to beat and pound and make her act in ways she doesn’t really like because she doesn’t know what else to do. “Watch it. I know where you sleep,” she teases, and then Molly playfully shoves at her, which sends her skittering off the side of the ledge because Gert has never been the agile one.

Here we go, she thinks, something else to make me look stupid because she expects to be picking herself off the ground in the next instant. Only she doesn’t because there are hands steadying her, and she knows those shoes because she is a dumb idiot with a memory that catches and holds onto everything. 

“You okay?” He doesn’t even pause before continuing. “Molly, you should be more careful.” 

Gert blinks at the eyes, and the set of Chase’s mouth, which is concern instead of amusement. You’re hiding, too, she thinks. We’re all hiding. She pushes her glasses up her nose even as she steps away from the hands, which do not grasp too tightly, which let her leave the instant she wants to. Chase Stein, terribly careful about respecting boundaries and secrets. All of them. Maybe that’s what annoys her most. The things he does, he does for everyone. Nothing is for her. But why should it be?

“Thanks,” she manages, glances over her shoulder to look for Molly who has continued walking along the ledge like it is the high bar, something that Gert could never master with her vision and her balance. “I’m fine. Thank you. Thanks.” She should shut up now. “Shouldn’t you be?” she hooks a thumb over her shoulder toward the building where the others likely are. 

Chase shrugs, and Gert doesn’t know what that means so she just looks at him for five seconds too long while her dumb heart forgets that she is trying to be cool. “It was boring.”

“Oh. Well.” What can she possibly do that will not be boring? “You can hang with us? If you want. If not, that’s fine. It’s fine.” Launching off a cliff on fire sounds so good right now. Letting their parents put her into the weird glowing thing actually seems like a more pleasant outcome than painfully scraping through a conversation with Chase when he looks soft instead of cocky and perfect, which is his normal setting. Cocky and perfect Chase Gert knows how to deal with, what barbs to throw. They have years of practice in that setting. Soft Chase, the Chase who clung to her when they thought the dinosaur was going to devour them, is different. Soft Chase is unexpected. 

She is not even trying her best.

“No, that’s fine,” he sits on the ledge and folds his hands in his lap and seems to take up less room than should be possible when one considers his height and size. Like he is trying not to be seen.

Gert has words behind the ones she says, but she thinks that Chase has words behind every move he makes. Gert likes languages. She wonders how she can learn this one.

Molly continues to walk along the ledge without even looking back, but Gert knows she knows what she’s doing.

“Tell me about the dinosaur,” Chase says.

Gert sits. Talks. Gestures with her hands and loses her nerves in the middle of a conversation about something that fascinates her, and there it is, her dumb heart thinks, a moment when his eyes go soft.


End file.
